Cardboard weed control and Saratoga road trip

The art of Peter Bowden
My photographs are on display at the Hewitt’s on Western Ave. Drop by for a look! These are professionally processed and printed on Kodak Endura paper for 100 year colorfastness.

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Contact: pbowden2@nycap.rr.com

This weekend I’m taking my gardening seminars on the road up to The Hewitt’s on Rt.9 (Maple Ave) in Saratoga /Wilton).

Sat. 5/18 at 11 AM. Plant food and pesticide basics
Take the mystery out of plant food. Learn to read plant food packaging to get just what your plants need to grow healthy and strong. Peter cuts through the veil of marketing so you’ll know just what you’re getting. Spring feeding techniques are also discussed to help you get the most bang for your plant food buck. Insecticide weed killer and disease control basics are also covered.

Sat.. 5/18 at 1 PM. Complete Lawn Care
Every aspect of lawn care is covered from feeding to seeding and the ever-confusing grub control.
The more you know about lawn care, the better lawn you’ll have and the more $$ you’ll save.

Sun 5/19 at 11 AM Vegetable Gardening for Beginners
Learn the basics of vegetable gardening so you can grow your own without making rookie mistakes.
Soil building, composting and plant scheduling are some of the topics discussed.

Sun. 5/19 at 1 PM Learning Your Yard
The more you know about your yard, the better results you’ll get. Learn to analyze the microclimates so you can get the right plants in the right locations.

Cardboard weed control
At my garden seminars and in talking to folks at the garden centers, the topic of weed control comes up often. When I suggest the use of cardboard under mulch for weed control, I get some odd looks. It is hard to describe in words how it looks so I send them here to my blog where I posted this tutorial. With that post now buried under a couple of years of recent posts, it is pretty hard to find. With the weed season upon us, I thought I’d re-up it to get the word out about this cheap and easy method of edging and weed control. I did this a couple of years ago and the area is still weed free.

Easy Edging and Mulching
There’s a constant battle between the lawn and the flowerbeds. The grass is always trying to invade the flowerbeds, and we are always trying to stop it. We call this ‘edging’. There are lots of options. Some folks sink edging blocks or even bricks into the soil. There is also metal or plastic edging that is buried in the ground. All this is done to prevent the grass’s tillers (underground shoots) from taking hold in our landscaping and flowerbeds. Installing edging is a pain in the rear, and in the case of blocks or bricks, the grass always seems to find a way through a crack. Metal or plastic edging can work but you can never mow right up to it so you need to spend more time trimming the edge with a weed whacker or grass shears…remember those?

There is an easier way, and all you need is a shovel. I use a straight bladed shovel for a nice neat edge. Simply slice into the grass at the edge of the bed at a steep angle 4″ deep. Grass can’t cross that barrier of air so it won’t make it into the bed on the other side of the trench. Here’s what it looks like:

The steep cut on the left prevents the grass from crossing into the flowerbed on the right

This is much easier than installing blocks or rolls of edging. Best of all, I can mow right up to this edge so I don’t need to waste time weed whacking. After 3 or 4 years you’ll need to recut the edge but it is easy and quick once the edge is established.

But wait!! It gets better!

I have an area that is difficult to mow around so I decided to turn it into a mulched bed to make mowing easier. Here’s what it looked like:

You can see the difficulty…there’s a storage bin, a couple of weeping pines, a hydrangea and a stump…it is nasty looking and darned near impossible to mow around all these obstacles.

I used the hose to outline the edge I want. It will be a nice rounded bed that will be easy to mow around.

The next step is to make a few slices along the hose so I know where to make my edge.

Then I simply finish making my cut…steep in the lawn side and sloping up into the bed on the other. I just toss the clumps I dig out into the bed…why waste good soil I say.

Here is the new bed with the cut made all the way around.

“But what about all the grass and weeds in the bed…and all the clumps of grass you tossed in?” you’re asking. I suppose that I could spend a couple of hours digging out all the grass and weeds, but I have a much quicker and easier way to deal with that…cardboard!

A layer of cardboard will smother the grass and it will die. All the clumps of sod that I tossed in will compost into the soil. I’m always on the prowl for large pieces of cardboard. I was lucky that a coworker had just done some home improvement and gave me the cardboard that a new front door and some appliances came in. Here’s the first cardboard sheet going down right on top of the grass and weeds.

Here’s the bed all covered with cardboard. I used a razor knife to slice the cardboard along the edge of the bed. Make sure that the cardboard overlaps heavily so the grass and weeds can’t get through…8″ of overlap will stop them.

I also used the razor knife to cut the cardboard so it fits around the trunks of the pines and hydrangea.

Now all that’s left is putting mulch on the cardboard. This is the fun part, and it goes down quickly. I put a 4″ to 5″ layer of cedar mulch down. There are many types of mulch, but I like cedar because it’s cheap and smells nice too.

Now the mulch is down, the area looks great and mowing will be simple.

It looks a little sparse now but more plants can be added to the bed easily. Just brush the mulch aside, cut a hole in the cardboard and plant….easy peasy and it looks sooo much better now. In all, this took less than an hour, and I used 7 bags of cedar mulch.